


Branch Point

by gladdecease



Category: Jackie Chan Adventures
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Community: au_bingo, Episode Related, Gen, M/M, Podfic Available, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 06:02:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gladdecease/pseuds/gladdecease
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jade has a few words of advice for Captain Black before she heads back to the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Branch Point

"You don't have to be so stiff around me, you know."

It really shouldn't surprise him that twenty plus years from now Jade would still be bizarrely good at sneaking up on him. And yet. Biting back a sound of alarm, Black forces himself into a more outwardly relaxed posture. "I wouldn't say I'm any more 'stiff' around you than all the other time travelers I've met," he says with a wry smile.

Jade laughs. "Okay, point taken. But still, it's weird to see you like this. Guess I never realized how much you loosened up after leaving for Section 14. Probably because you didn't have to fill out all the extra paperwork I caused, but I guess I'll take what I can get." She walks a circle around him, a calculating gleam in her eye making him more uncomfortable than he'll readily admit to. So much about her still screams _Jade_ \- Jackie's tiny, crafty, reckless niece, Jade - and then she pulls out moves like this. The grace of her movements is all martial arts - Jackie's the same way when not otherwise preoccupied - but the attentiveness is secret ops military training.

To see so much of himself and Jackie in another person, it's... disarming, for reasons he'd rather not look into.

"Was there something in particular you wanted to ask me about?" he asks instead. She comes to a stop in front of him, a secretive smile on her face.

"Not really," she chirps. "Though I kind of wanted to ask you the same question."

Black finds an eyebrow raising involuntarily. "Isn't that a bad idea?"

Jade's brow wrinkles. "What do you - oh." She smacks herself in the forehead. "Duh. Hold on. Hey, Kepler!" she shouts, running towards the labs. Black follows, hesitant.

It's not that he doesn't want to know things, but every sci-fi movie he's seen on the subject (which has increased in number exponentially since his introduction to Jackie's uncle, for no other reason than wanting _some_ kind of baseline for discussing the Dark Hand's latest plot, no matter how absurd) has said that future knowledge is a bad thing. Or causes a paradox, or something. Time travel stories are kind of confusing like that.

But yes, if all of that isn't a problem, there are things he wants to know. At the same time, he isn't sure he really wants to know the answer.

Kepler barely looks up from his current project when they enter his lab. Black suspects that even if he did, the half dozen magnifying lenses attached to his face would make it hard for him to see. "Hey, future Jade," he says absently, applying a soldering iron to a circuit board. He pulls it back, squinting at the result, then reapplies it.

"Kepler, can you explain to Captain Black why me telling him things about the future isn't going to cause the end of the world and stuff?"

Kepler solders three more regions of the circuit board before shutting the iron off and stepping back from his work. He pulls off the set of lenses, blinks at Jade, and shrugs. "Sure, why not." Turning to Black, he says, "The thing you've got to understand before you talk about time travel is Hugh Everett's many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics. It suggests that for every possibility, there's a universe, but they all originally came from the same _original_ universe. For every choice or quantum superposition, there's a branching point where one universe becomes two or more. With me so far?"

Black considers this. "...maybe."

Jade sighs. "You need to learn to tone down the technobabble, Kepler."

"Maybe I will in a few years." He shrugs, putting back on his lenses and turns on the soldering iron.

"Okay, I'll take it from here." Grabbing a dry erase marker, she starts drawing a circle on one of the lab's infinite collection of whiteboards. "See, here's a universe. Ignore that quantum stuff, that's heavy-duty physics you don't need to worry about. Now, say in this universe you, Captain Black, have to pick between soup and a salad for lunch." She waves a hand in the air at the look on his face. "Work with me here, I'm seriously simplifying things. So, all things being equal, in one universe you pick soup, and in the other you pick salad." She draws two lines connected to the first circle, adding a circle at the end of one line she labels "Soup", and a circle labelled "Salad" for the other line. "Both of those universes have the same past - everything that happened in that first universe. But they have different futures - one where you had soup, and the other - "

"Where I had salad, okay, I think I get it now," Black says flatly. He's not a child, he does understand _some_ of these concepts already.

Jade grins weakly. "Heh heh. Just trying to make things clear. So, let's say you're in that first universe right now, where you have an equally likely chance of picking soup or salad, when suddenly I, Jade, Time Traveler Extraordinaire, come back in time from the Soup universe to tell you to get salad instead." She draws an arrow in green from the "Soup" circle back to the first circle. "This changes the probability of things, _hopefully_ because you listen to me and take what I say into account." She makes the line between the first circle and the "Salad" circle thicker. "So you're more likely to head to the "Salad" universe, or hey, maybe even a third, completely new universe where you make yourself a sandwich instead. But that doesn't erase my Soup universe, because it's still a possibility to you, however remote." Jade blinks, looking at her diagram of circles and arrows with new eyes. It's certainly not the easiest concept to grasp, even with visual aids. "Are you getting any of this?"

"Some of it." Frowning, Black voices the one conclusion he's reached. "So... your future isn't necessarily _my_ future?"

Jade's smile widens. "Yeah, exactly! That's especially true since you agreed to keep Shendu Junior here - it's not like that's how he appeared in _my_ timeline."

"Then why do you think anything you can tell me about your future will hold true?"

"Be _cause_ ," Jade says, drawing out the word childishly. She's still smiling, though, so Black has a feeling it's intentional. "That's only one thing that's changed! Quantum physics aside, your future probably won't be _too_ different from mine. Especially for things that aren't affected by demons or magic, or how your decisions would change because you know about one possible outcome."

A suspicion starts to form in the back of his head. "So, when you said I could ask you about the future, you weren't talking about gathering information for Section 13's records." He'd assumed she was trying to make his (and possibly her future) job easier by giving him leads to follow up on.

Jade snorts. "Of course not! Drago's presence in your timeline totally undermines that - who even knows if he'll make his original appearance, now that there's already one of him out? I was talking about your _personal_ future."

Something about the way she says that unsettles Black. "I'm not sure what you mean," he says slowly.

" _You_ know," she says, and - oh yes, very unsettled now - winks. "Though," she adds, looking around, "maybe this is a conversation better held in private. See ya, Kepler," she says over her shoulder, leaving for Black's office.

"Not likely," Kepler says, waving goodbye.

Jade nearly sits in Black's chair when they reach his office, but an amused look from him is all it takes for her to giggle weakly and move to the other side of the desk. Black sits down and rests his chin on the backs of his hands. "Now," he says, "what's this all about?"

"You get your office checked for bugs and stuff pretty regularly, right?" When Black gives her a look - this is a highly secret government operation, of course they sweep for bugs - Jade sits down, resting one leg on the other's knee. She pulls out a small gadget, which looks like nothing so much as a miniature remote control, and presses a button on it, saying, "Just in case." After a few seconds of a slight buzzing just on this side of audible, something in the earpiece of the office phone hisses and sparks.

That taken care of, Jade pockets the device, then leans back in her chair and starts counting things off on her fingers. "Okay, so, gay marriage is legalized and then unlegalized and then relegalized like, half a dozen times in California before an amendment to the US Bill of Rights gets passed - there's a bill to undo that in Congress right now, but there's no way the president would allow it. The war in Afghanistan gets worse before it gets better - understatement about pretty much all war, I know, but you'll feel better knowing that it _does_ get better, I think. There's been a black president and a female president, and both of them were pretty cool about the changes you proposed making to Section 13. Hm, what else... I know you don't like being open about something the armed forces can't have, so you should probably know that DADT is abolished within the next ten years - oh, and your favorite pizza place closes down in 2007, so you should probably enjoy it while you can."

Uh. Well. Black blinks a few times - slowly, to make sure he's not seeing things. Jade is still sitting there, counting revelations off on her fingers and frowning thoughtfully about _restaurants_. "Um," he manages.

"What?" Jade stares at him, her brow furrowing slightly. She gasps and jumps to her feet, chair skidding back behind her. Her face becomes a caricature of horror. "Oh god, I've ruined _everything_ , haven't I? You aren't dating Jackie yet, and now you never _will_ because now you know _I_ know and you would rather die miserable and alone than have _me_ know anything about your love life - and don't try and tell me different," she snaps when Black tries to interrupt, "because I still remember that fight you had when I walked in on you - _kissing_ , just kissing!" she adds frantically, before he can even think to react to that.

As if he could react to anything right now.

"I..." he tries to say, but it's hopeless. He can't even look in Jade's direction, let alone look her in the eye. He lets his flush-warmed face fall into his hands. Jade, sounding equally flustered, groans and falls into her seat, head slumping back to hit the top of the chair with a dull thud. The sound repeats a few times. "What have I _done_?" she moans between thuds.

Black sucks in a shaky breath, alarmed when it comes out a harsh laugh rather than a sigh. "Not as much as you think," he says.

Jade sits upright after a moment's consideration. "So... you _are_ dating?"

"Not exactly," he manages, looking up. It's more than he's said on the subject to anyone in years, and it's still enough of a confession to put his job in serious jeopardy. But Jade is already brightening, and if he thinks about what she's told him - which he will, the next time he's off work and has a bottle of hard liquor to keep him from thinking _too_ much - about what that implies, maybe it's not so bad. Taking that risk for Jackie, for him and Jackie. (For _us_ , Jackie said once. Just the once, but the memory of it remains sharp.) Maybe that could be worth it.

"We were," he elaborates. "Kind of. But I... we wanted different things. Or so I thought."

" _Oh_ ," Jade says, all too understandingly. "This is back when you were still fuckbuddies, huh?"

He splutters. "Jade!"

She laughs. "Sorry, sorry. You're so immune to my antics these days, I couldn't resist getting a rise out of you one last time." Serious again, she points at him. "But you better make things right, mister. That little Jade out there deserves to have _three_ awesome uncles, you hear me?"

Black finds himself grinning without meaning to. "I hear you."

Jade's watch beeps. "Oh, crap, that's my five minute warning - the second part of my time travel spell's about to kick in. I have to get going. My portal's going to appear in the middle of the main walkways in about two minutes, and I need to make sure nobody else accidentally goes through." Standing, she gives Black a smile. "Come say goodbye?"

"Of course." He picks up his in-house phone, saying, "I'll let the others know you're leaving."

Jade nods, heading for the door. "Right."

And that should be it. He's helped saved a possible future today, made it very unlikely Shendu will _ever_ get out of his statue form, and learned that the future has a lot of good in store. Surely that should be enough for one day.

Still...

Covering the phone's receiver, he calls out, "Jade!" She turns around expectantly, still smiling. "One more thing. Section 14?"

Her grin turns wicked. "Think _Men in Black_ with cooler toys."

Caught between laughter and a groan, he shakes his head, letting her go.

Aliens. Of _course_.

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "Alt. History: Canon event changed" at [au_bingo](http://community.livejournal.com/au_bingo). My table is [here](http://glad-fics.livejournal.com/38550.html#cutid1).

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Branch Point [podfic]](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1021499) by [gladdecease](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gladdecease/pseuds/gladdecease)




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